Pain
by blumoone
Summary: "They say the loss of a Child is the deepest of despair..."


**A/N: Hello my wonderful readers! While True Blood's 7th season has made my muse quite a fickle thing, when inspiration strikes I do my damnedest to do our favorite couple the justice that Buckner can't seem to. With that being said, this one-shot conveys exactly how I feel Pam's reaction to the death of her progeny should have been. Granted, this story has been written in the story-verse I created so it's set at least 25 years after Tara was turned and she and Pam have been lovers for near about that long. Feedback is most appreciated as your reviews, thoughts, and comments keep my going.**

**Happy reading!**

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Tara's end of the bond had been all aquiver with emotion that night and it had Pam on edge. Every fiber of her being was strung tighter than the strings of a Stradivarius. Confusion. That was the first of it that trickled down to her, followed by a spark of anger, then a wave of sadness that crested into a knee weakening relief. But that didn't last long at all. Merely a few heartbeats later, the confusion was back but rather than like before this confusion rapidly contorted into anxiety, a rush of adrenaline, and then fear – sharp and potent.

But there was nothing she could do. Pam couldn't go to her Child for she was trapped by some unseen force. Like a caged animal, she could only pace back and forth, rubbing the center of her chest in desperate circles in hopes to quell her own rapidly growing fears. Tara was in the heat of battle now and despite it all she couldn't help but pride her willful progeny for her fearlessness and tenacity. But she also knew such traits could put her Child in potentially harmful situations – had seen such situations first hand. Had she been human, she would have been holding her breath as the fight continued to wage within her. Then all went calm. But it was eerie sort of clam not unlike the passing of the eye of a strong storm, wrought with tension and anticipation.

What filtered through the bond next would haunt her forever. She kept her hand pressed tight to her chest as Tara allowed the desire for her Maker to slip through the fingers of the bond, the longing to lose herself in the depths of Pam's cerulean blue gaze, to feel the brush of her bee-stung lips against her mocha dusted ones, for the blonde to be at her side right then and there helping her ward off whatever assailant she was fighting. And those were the last thoughts, last feelings she felt before her progeny, her Tara was staked through the heart and their bond was severed.

The sheer shock of it brought her to her knees but the pain, the cold, sharp pain that exploded in her chest was enough to draw a ragged shriek from her thought that was followed by another and then another and the blood poured from her eyes because all that agony needed somewhere to go.

Eric had fucking lied. And so had she for that matter. Pam had told that demented psychologist all those years ago her Viking Maker's theory on vampires and pain so convincingly that even she had believed the dribble that had come out her petal pink mouth. While it was true that vampires extended life span was incentive to move past the pain of grief and loss, no amount of years, decades, or centuries would provide enough time for the emptiness in the center of her chest to even begin to fill. It was what drowning must have felt like and it fucking sucked. The place where her heart used to beat felt as if it had been carved out with a tarnished silver spoon and left to fester. Her chest was so tight and even if she needed to draw oxygen into her lungs, she wouldn't have been able to. Even still the screams kept ripping from her throat.

But the wordless sounds did nothing to ease the pain, that raw and caustic burn that nothing in the world could have prepared her for. Nothing made sense to her when the frayed end of the bond within her was desperately trying to reach for its other half. But the other half, her other half, her progeny's end of the bond had been extinguished and there was nothing Pam could do about it but succumb to that poisonous pain that was sure to last for a thousand years. If she even made it to see next night because as the screams burst from her mouth, the pain felt like the precursor to her own True Death that she would gladly welcome.

And then, she woke up.

She woke in the arms of her lover, the leanly muscular midnight dark arms that she knew so well for Tara, who had been sleeping quietly beside her when the frighteningly vivid nightmare had unfolded, had awakened with a start when Pam's screams had hit her ears.

"Shh baby," Tara crooned, her voice hoarse with fear as she rocked her gently in the center of their lush California king canopy bed that lay safe in their palatial underground cubby of Fangtasia Revamped, "It's okay, it's okay."

"It hurts Tara," Pam gasped, the words wrapped around a harsh desperation, coming out almost like a beg, "It _hurts_."

The blonde had known pain has thoroughly as she had known pleasure but this, this was something different. The realization that her emotions had been the result of a mere dream had dawned but even that mere relief did nothing against the crippling, almost excruciating pain that flooded her body like liquid silver and sunlight. She couldn't stand this pain that even thought of losing her Child brought on.

Alabaster hands clung frantically to Tara so tightly that had the younger vampire been human more than one of her bones would have shattered. "It fucking hurts."

Her voice broke on the last word and it came out on a ragged sob that was followed by a series of gasps until finally her shoulders were shaking with the tangible grief. Tara held her though it all, her expression one of total calm even as a tempest raged within her – fear, anger, helplessness, anguish, and disbelief – borne from just the sight of her Maker's pain. Pain that she herself could not experience because Pam was shielding harder than she had ever before, trying her damndest to protect her lover from the poisonous throes of her agony, fearful even that the tiniest leakage would bring to reality the nightmare. But Tara could see the scene unfolding in her Maker's mind almost as if she had been dreaming herself, could feel the sorrow coming off Pam in waves. She just couldn't feel the pain and wished that she could solely if only to relieve just little of the crushing weight from her lover.

Squeezing her Maker tighter to her, she put her lips to the shell of a cool lily white ear and whispered, "It was only a dream. Just a dream. Like the ones I use to have, baby. I'm not going nowhere no time soon."

Her lips brushed light kisses along Pam's jaw line down to the column of her throat and pulse point that had long ago ceased to throb. The blonde had stopped crying but she trembled like a leaf on a tree in autumn as her progeny continued her ministrations.

"Even if something happened to me," Tara murmured against her Maker's cool, soft skin, "You still have Eric. You wouldn't be completely alone."

Pam shook her head emphatically, swallowing around the lump in her throat that let her know she still wanted to cry. She kept the tears at bay though. "No," she said hoarsely, "No. If something happened to you I don't think I would survive it." She turned to face her lover, her cerulean blue gaze hard and unwavering, "I have Eric, yes, but he released me. He is not tied to me the way he was the century before I met you. There was a void then. And you filled that void. Without you? I would be empty. I can't live like that."

Tara didn't realize that she had begun to cry until the rivulets of blood fell from her cheeks and dripped down to the hands she had wrapped around her Maker. The combination of seeing her lover so broken over the prospect of losing her and hearing the words that fell from her bee-stung lips was almost too much because it hit home. Before she had been made vampire, there had been a void within her too, a void that had been growing more vast as she aged, a void that had tried to be filled with hope for her abusive alcoholic mother and her string of bullshit boyfriends. Nothing had fit. Until Pam. Pam had filled that emptiness within her like the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle and she had been whole ever since. Watching her Maker's tears and rocking her trembling body, Tara knew that had things been reversed and it had been Pam's death her mind had decided to fool her with, she would have reacted the exact same way.

Sniffling softly, she drew her thumb across a perfect alabaster cheek, smearing the line of blood that had spilled from oceanic eyes. "Lucky for you I'm a tough son of a bitch and I ain't gonna let _nothing_ take me from you. No matter what I gotta do, I'll always find a way to make it back to your arms before the sun comes up. You hear me?"

Despite herself Pam laughed, a short huff of breath, as she stared into the obsidian depths of her progeny's eyes, a hand lifted to toy with ink black tresses. Oh yes, she prided her willful lover on her fearlessness and her tenacity, the way she completely disregarded what she deemed was unacceptable and while in that moment it wasn't enough to drive the nightmare from her mind's eye, the sharp, cold, tightness in her chest began to dissolve. Tara was in her arms now. Tara's voice was in her ears, whispering sweet things that more than made her insides quiver with contentment. And though the prospect of it could quite quickly reduce her to a mass of pain and blood tears, should fate be so wicked enough not to guarantee that all her tomorrows be spent with Tara, the fact that she had _tonight_ was what dried her eyes.

She pressed her lips to their chocolate counterparts and smiled.

"I do."


End file.
